Home track advantage for Antigonish driver Donald Chisholm

Antigonish driver Donald Chisholm will be one of the favourites in Saturday’s Parts For Trucks Pro Stock Tour race at Riverside International Speedway in James River. (TED PRITCHARD / Staff)

There’s no place like home for Donald Chisholm.

Riverside International Speedway in James River has been good to the Antigonish driver.

On Saturday, weather permitting, he’ll seek to defend the championship in the Ron MacGillivray Chev Buick GMC 150 at the high-banked oval. He also won the race in 2011.

He knows his way around Riverside as well as any driver in the region. His family owns the facility, one of the best short tracks in the country after a rebuild in 2006.

“I’m pretty pumped to get back there again,” he said Thursday. “I really love racing there. It’s definitely my favourite spot to race. I might be a little biased, but I just like going there.”

Saturday’s race is the third of the Parts For Trucks Pro Stock Tour. It’s the first extra-distance after 100-lap features at Scotia Speedworld and Petty International Raceway in River Glade, N.B.

Chisholm ran to a seventh-place finish in the season opener and was 11th at Petty. In both races he had to come from the back after getting spun out.

Former two-time points champ Shawn Turple of Enfield won the opener with P.E.I.’s Jonathan Hicken taking the second race. Halifax’s John Flemming, the reigning series champ, was second in each.

Chisholm’s team built a new car in the off-season and ran it in the first two races. But Chisholm has dusted off the car he used to win this race a year ago and hadn’t made a decision which way to go as of Thursday.

He also raced last year’s car to second in the IWK 250 and the September pro stock race, in both cases losing to New Brunswick’s Shawn Tucker.

“If last year’s car is quick that’s what we’ll run,” he said. “If the new one is quicker, we’ll pick that one.”

He said the new car tested well at Riverside earlier in the year, but he’s got a good feel for last year’s ride. He’s got a good sense of humour about the situation.

“We have won there in other cars previously, but this car worked well the first race last year in Antigonish so we just kept working on it.

“Whatever car I pick about halfway through the race I’ll wish I had the other one.”

Flemming, with four titles, and Hicken lead the series with Flemming holding a 10-point edge. Turple, Cole Butcher of Porters Lake and Tucker have the next three spots.

Time trials begin at 5:10 p.m. with racing set to begin at 6 p.m. The rain date is Sunday.

It starts a busy stretch for the series with races at Scotia, Petty and Speedway 660 in Geary, N.B., over the next three weekends.